


Stay

by LivEinziger



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s08e20, Romance, Shameless Smut, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:47:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28764300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LivEinziger/pseuds/LivEinziger
Summary: What if, in episode s08e20, "Annihilated", Elliot had gone to Olivia instead of Kathy?
Relationships: Elliot Stabler/Kathy Stabler, Olivia Benson & Elliot Stabler, Olivia Benson/Elliot Stabler
Comments: 3
Kudos: 37





	Stay

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Ever since I started Deleted Scenes, the girls in the writing gc on twitter have been prompting me with this idea: what if, in Annihilated, Elliot didn't sleep with Kathy, and slept with Olivia instead? I'd never gotten around to it, but this week the episode was on tv and my immense hatred for that scene fueled inspiration for this short, pretty straightforward story that I hope you'll enjoy.
> 
> This story happens right after Elliot goes to the house in Queens to see his kids, so he doesn't yet fully understand what happened at the Royce family's house. I have worked with what he and Olivia knew by then.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to my beta awildmind, who not only deals with my punctuation conundrums but also always helps boost my confidence when it's lacking.

Season 8, episode 20: ANNIHILATED

Deleted scene: STAY

  
  
  


“Stay,” she says. 

It’s all Elliot has been wanting to hear for so long. She wears a nightgown, a quite revealing one. It shows the body he knows so well, the body that he’s spent twenty years mapping. He knows every street, every avenue, every shortcut.

She’s inviting him to travel them again.

Kathy doesn’t know the reason he’s called and told her he needed to see the kids. She doesn’t know that he has just been to a crime scene where a mother has killed her three kids and tried to kill her husband. She doesn’t know that he had needed to check each of his children’s foreheads for a bullet wound, that he wouldn’t be able to sleep in his empty apartment until he’d made sure there weren’t any.

She doesn’t know that this isn’t about her. She senses his distress. She knows something is wrong, and she also knows he could never tell her exactly what. She offers him the only comfort she can, and he’s grateful. 

But no.

He’s spent twenty years pretending that the comfort she could offer him was enough while he was still dying inside, watching his insides rot, his heart hollow, his soul blacken after each case. She has resented him for not being able to convince her that he had everything he needed with her. This, that she offers now, is not and never has been enough, and he has never been able to satisfactorily pretend it was — that was actually the main reason she had decided to leave him.

So no.

“I’m sorry,” he says with a slight shrug that he knows will seal this door forever. “I really can’t stay. I just…just needed to see them before going back to work.”

Surprisingly, it’s a relief. 

He evades her disappointment and shows himself out of the house that no longer feels like home. 

He gets into his car with the knowledge that all of his children’s bodies are intact and alive and the doors that protect them are locked. They’re safe. He sighs as he drives, knowing that Kathy has divorced him, but she would never harm their children. 

That is all he needs from her now. 

_ Stay _ . He can hardly believe he said no. An invitation like that from his wife could mean the chance to put their family back together — it’s supposed to be everything he wants. It’s what he thought he was desperately hoping for this whole time, for the last two fucking years, since she’d said she couldn’t go on like that. Since she had seen him after a particularly hard case, a case almost as hard as this one, and said she could no longer deal with his silences.

That she could no longer deal with the fact that there is only one person he was ever able to talk to. 

Before Elliot notices, it’s this person’s apartment building he’s driving to. 

It’s this person’s doorbell he’s ringing.

“Elliot,” she says, her hair still up in that same ponytail he’d seen when he’d asked her to brief Cragen, because he’d needed to go somewhere. “Are you alright?” she asks, wearing a black tank top and sweatpants and a look on her face that carries the weight of those dead children.

A look that mirrors his own.

The eyes that stare back at him have seen those bodies, too. They’ve seen the blood; they’ve seen the tears streaming down Malcolm Royce’s face when he heard the confirmation that his whole family was gone. 

Her eyes have seen the look on  _ his _ face when he’d said he needed to get the hell out of that hospital and go see his kids. 

Now, her eyes see him in ruins. They see him broken, about to crumble, unable to stand on his own. They see him right after refusing to take back his place on the bed he’s slept in for over twenty years. They see the man who wasn’t able to accept the invitation into his ex-wife’s ignorant arms. They see the man who can only entrust one person with his pain.

“Elliot,” Olivia calls, and he realizes he’s never said a word to her, but he knows that she knows.

“Liv, I…” he manages. “I can’t…” he pleads. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” she says as she steps aside, eyeing him with worry. “Are you alright?” she repeats. 

“No, I’m not,” is all he can say. 

“I know,” Olivia confirms. “I know you’re not. What can I do?”

“You can…” he’s not sure what he came here for. 

_ Stay _ , his ex-wife said, but that’s not where he wanted to be. He said no and left, drove to Olivia’s. He wonders what the hell that means as his stare ends up on her chest, unable to help but take inventory of her nipples making their shape known through the black fabric. 

“Liv,” he whispers, but the sound of the door closing muffles it. 

She turns around from the door, and up until this moment, he’s had every reason to keep himself from doing it, from even acknowledging it. But now, after everything that happened, all he can see when he looks at her is the only pair of eyes that know what he’s seen. 

“What can I do?” she repeats innocently, but he knows that, on some level, she knows.

“I need you,” is all he says.

“Okay,” she agrees and approaches him, wearing a proactive look that still doesn’t admit she understands what he means. 

“No,” he rasps. “I need  _ you _ .”

She gets it now. Her pained eyes falter, but there’s a hint of recognition there, a glint that says she needs this just as much as he does — she would just never be the first one to actually acknowledge it.

Her eyes search his desperately, a million questions that he silences with each step taken in her direction. Her mouth moves, but no sound comes out. He can tell she wants to plead, but she doesn’t risk it. Maybe she’s afraid the request she’ll voice won’t be the correct one. 

The one she’s  _ supposed  _ to make.

He wants to reassure her, tell her that it’s okay, but no words come out. Tonight isn’t a night for words. Words have been silenced like the voices of those innocent children; words couldn’t grasp the magnitude of the tragedy they have both had to deal with. That’s the reason they can’t talk to anybody about these things. 

There’s no way to talk about this.

So they stay silent. Olivia with her loneliness, Elliot surrounded by people who can’t understand. 

Olivia has always been the only person he could exchange a few words with about these things, but not tonight. After what happened tonight, words aren’t going to cut it. They need more, and Elliot knows that Olivia knows that too. 

They’ve both spent way too many nights in the wrong bed seeking the wrong person or alone, self-sentenced to solitude. Tonight, nothing else is going to cut it. They need someone. They need one person, and one person only.

His hand raises slowly but decidedly and lands lightly on her cheek. She blinks slowly and sighs, leaning into his touch.

His other hand is more demanding; it goes straight for her waist, clutching firmly and pulling her to him as he leans down and captures her mouth with his, meaning to be gentle, but nothing about tonight is gentle, on either of them, and her eager arms agree as they circle him, her hand coming to rest on the back of his head, fingers massaging his scalp as she thoroughly kisses him back. 

“Elliot,” she murmurs when he bows down to kiss the junction between her throat and collarbone, and it sounds like a question.

For a moment, he just settles into the crook of her neck, and they embrace as though receiving each other’s pain, their accumulated sorrows. Their hushed, misunderstood silences. 

“Liv,” he says, and it sounds like an answer. 

He pulls back a little, and she frames his face with both hands, stroking his cheek with her right thumb. She tilts up her head to close the space that hangs between them, tentatively kissing him, but he responds in kind with confidence.

Elliot’s urgent fingers slip underneath her tank top, gripping at her skin and sliding up until he palms her entire breast, ripping a surprised gasp from her throat as she instinctively pulls him closer. He feels himself grow and harden as their bodies grind intimately, as his hand and their mouths cross the line they’ve been able to keep clear of for so long. 

He pinches her nipple between two fingers as he continues to squeeze the flesh, and in response her hands erratically, hurriedly wrap around his jacket, forcibly removing it. The motion forces him to break contact with her skin so she can slide the leather off of him, and she wastes no time before starting to work on the buttons of his black shirt, which is discarded next. She pulls away from their kiss for a second, taking in the sight of his naked torso. 

“I need,” she exhales, her hesitant hands reaching for him, and he takes a step to help her beat the distance. 

Elliot covers her hands as they smooth over his chest to let her know he wants them there. “What?” he asks, grazing her forearms all the way down then grappling at her elbows. He leans down to nibble at her earlobe. “Tell me.”

“You,” barely escapes her, her fingers lazily traveling up and down the muscles of his back, testing their firmness. “I need  _ you _ , too.”

Her confession ignites a fire in him, a flame that burns with all the nights they’ve needed this but denied themselves the right to comfort each other, trying to obey some moral obligation or other. He impatiently rolls up her tank top and pulls it over her head, revealing her chest, her glorious breasts coming into view. 

He’s envisioned them in his head so many times. Another need he’s always had to keep under his breath.

Now here they are, nipples perked just for him. He pulls her to him, clashing her chest with his, the collision he didn’t know he needed so badly. He can feel in the way she shudders that she is just as thrilled by the magnificence of what is happening as he is. His hands clasp over her back, and he’s invaded with the sensation, the possibility of  _ having  _ her, the newfound urgency to make her truly his. 

He lets his hand slide down and slip underneath her sweatpants and underwear, cup her ass, and squeeze her as he fights his own disbelief that he’s touching her like this. His fingers trace their way around her hip, sinking into the silken skin of her inner thigh a few times before finding her core. 

She moans softly into his mouth, her lips going limp for a moment as his thumb parts her and finds her clit, massaging it slowly as two other fingers slip in and out of her entrance — he doesn’t need to see her to know where to touch her, and she doesn’t need to tell him either. Her breaths become increasingly shorter as he moves her closer to her climax, but before she gets there, he withdraws his hand, using it to pull the rest of her clothes down. 

They break the kiss for a moment, Elliot helping her out of her sweatpants and underwear and backing her up towards the couch. When they get there, he reaches for her ponytail, pulling at it to loosen her hair and let it fall around her shoulders.

She waves towards her bedroom. “Do you wanna—” she begins, but he interrupts her.

“Right here,” he clarifies, turning her around in a swift motion and holding her from behind as she braces herself against the back of the couch. 

Olivia is completely naked now. Elliot unhurriedly flattens his hands over her hips, her back, circles her stomach, cups her breasts, holding their weight, registering their smoothness. Her hands reach behind her to pull at his jeans, expertly working his belt then his zipper until she frees him. Her fingers wrap around his length, making him groan into her shoulder as he sinks his teeth into her skin. 

“Jesus, Liv,” he breathes as she continues her ministrations, sliding her hand up and down his cock, sliding her thumb over the tip. She touches him blindly, like she already knows him. 

“Fuck me, El,” she commands, turning her head and searching his eyes, a flicker of anticipation as their glances meet, a sharp inhale dissipating the last of her doubt as she projects her hips toward him. 

He gets rid of his pants. Trailing kisses up her back and the nape of her neck, he pushes his chest into her to coax her to bend further down towards the couch and prop her hips up for him as he positions himself at her entrance with one hand. He feels himself grow even harder when he catches a glimpse of her knuckles turning white as she grips at the couch to prepare herself.

He sinks into her depths slowly, giving her time to adjust, and the feeling of opening her up is overwhelming. Still draped over her, he secures her hips with both hands for leverage and pulls out, sliding back in a bit faster this time. She hums, and he feels her throat’s vibration against his lips. As he drives into her slowly, Olivia starts moving in perfect sync with him, increasing the speed slowly in an unspoken agreement, the sounds of their bodies colliding and their moans the only communication needed right now. 

As he starts to pound harder, she starts crying out — close, as he knows she is, to her orgasm. He lets one of his hands circle her waist lovingly, clutching her even more firmly against him, his hand wrapping around her breast, and she holds his arm with both of hers, keeping it near her chest, letting him know she wants him there just as much as he wants to be there. 

Feeling himself tumble closer and closer, Elliot increases the speed and vigor of his strokes. “Come for me,” he urges.

He can feel it as she clenches around him, gripping him hard, her cries turning into a soft whimper just as he joins her over the edge, his body shuddering violently, the pleasure spreading through him like a smooth liquid. 

Still inside her, he envelopes her as they struggle to catch their breaths. A moment later, he pulls her up with him as he stands upright again, sliding off of her and turning her around so he can seize her lips in a lazy kiss, revelling in the sensation of their naked bodies pressed together. 

Their arms still surround one another when their stares meet, relieved. Their shoulders relax, several pounds lighter. Their breaths are released, giving way to a little peace: the peace of knowing that there is still hope in the world; there is still love, despite what they have both witnessed — because of what they’ve just accomplished. 

It’s the shared pain of having seen what nobody else has to, but also the shared absolution that they’ll never be able to stop all the bad things from happening. They wordlessly contemplate the ambivalence that opposes their successes and failures on the job, their strength and powerlessness, like two inseparable sides of the same coin. 

Elliot takes a deep breath, his lips forming a small smile at the sight in front of him: a breathless, flushed Olivia, her hair tousled, her forehead covered in a fine coat of sweat. She smiles back at him, a small smile as well. 

They’re the only ones that know the toll it takes to live this life. They’re the only ones who understand each other’s despair and each other’s smile, each other’s need for release after a night like this one. They welcome each other’s silences.

“What now?” Elliot says, putting into just two words what is starting to transpire between them, his heart lighter when pressed against hers. He feels like this is a question she can handle right now.

Olivia sighs, caressing his jaw with her thumb, and puts her answer into just one word, one he can handle right now. “Stay.”


End file.
